


The Unprofessional Yenta

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Post-Movie(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1890033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Natasha Romanoff tried to hook up Steve Rogers (and the one time Sam Wilson suceeded).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unprofessional Yenta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaeveBran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeveBran/gifts).



She smiles up at him as she walks past him into the elevator, dark-haired, dainty and doe-eyed. "Thank you, Captain Rogers."

"My pleasure, ma'am." Steve keeps holding the door for the women he can see walking down the corridor towards the elevator.

Neither Natasha nor Maria Hill hurry when they see him holding the door. They just keep pace as they walk into the elevator car. Natasha flashes him the faint, enigmatic smile he’s come to expect from her.

Hill gives him an acknowledging nod. “Thanks, Rogers. Files and Records.”

“Authorised.”

As the doors close, the first woman shifts over to make more room for Natasha and Hill. Her smile is warm and inviting as she tilts her head to look up at him. “Captain Rogers? I’m Kristen. From Statistics. That is, I mean, I’m working down in Statistics.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“Oh, please, just call me Kristen,” she says. “I hear you’ll be working with S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D Operations. With Agent Romanoff, actually.” He indicates Natasha, on the other side of the elevator car, her expression unruffled and serene. Beside her, Hill is checking something on her tablet, her mouth pursed in displeasure.

Kristen gives the two women a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, then looks back at Steve almost immediately. “Well, I’m sure your data will cross my desk at some point. Collective and anonymous, of course, but, everyone’s in Statistics sooner or later.”

The lift car stops. The doors open. Hill strides out without looking up from her tablet, and the people waiting there move out of her way.

“Anyway,” Kristen says brightly, almost hesitating on her way out the door. She has the expression of someone who wants to say more but doesn’t know quite what. She settles for a quick, intimate look. “Captain. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Ma’am,” Steve replies with a nod. This appears to satisfy her, although she does look back over her shoulder as she walks out into the busy corridor.

Natasha moves over in the car so she’s next to Steve, shoulder to shoulder. Her expression changes subtly, but she doesn’t say anything. At least, not then.

* * *

The truth is that women notice Steve. They have ever since he took the serum – some openly, some more subtly. They like looking, appreciating, inviting.

Some – like Kristen – check him out very obviously. Some are less obvious but no less interested.

Having been largely ignored by women back when he was the little guy, Steve has always been flattered but wary.

He’s particularly wary in the modern world considering how much things have changed.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D employs people based on their efficiency and capability, not their physical appearance, personal taste, gender, or choice in bedmates.

Steve likes to think he’s a pretty open-minded guy.

Still, sometimes it takes a bit of effort not to stare.

The hair is purple. Rich, royal purple. And long, with half of it in a coronet-like braid around her head, the the other half of it falling loose behind her back. She’s wearing boots with stilt-like heels and sashays down the hallway with the sensuality of a Paris cabaret dancer.

Maria Hill, on the other hand, moves like a marine on a mission as she strides down the corridor.

“Rogers.”

“Hill.”

“Rogers, this is Lillian Vendi. She’s just transferred over to Operations Accounting and will be taking you through your salary benefits, including operational bonuses, 401K, and backpay.”

Steve meets Ms. Vendi’s direct gaze, and realises she has a small silver stud on her lip. “I heard there were some complications.”

“Oh, it was _all_ complication,” she says, the head of the stud gleaming as she talks, a silver twinkle on her lower lip. “But it presented a challenge. I can’t meet with you right now, Captain, I have an appointment in the dungeons, so I’ll email you an appointment time and we’ll see about getting your financial affairs in order, so you needn’t be beholden to Tony Stark.”

She makes it sound like Steve’s sold his soul to the devil, although the sentiment about Stark isn’t uncommon in S.H.I.E.L.D. Oh, there are people who like him well enough, but there’s a general feeling that he’s just dabbling in ‘world security’ for the fun of it.

“That’ll be fine, ma’am.”

They reach the door that leads into and Lillian pushes it open and holds it so the others can pass through. Steve tries to hold the door so she can go first. She doesn’t budge.

“Captain.”

“Ms. Vendi.”

“This isn’t necessary.”

“I’ve got this, ma’am.”

Already through the door, Hill doesn’t sigh or smile. She still manages to give the impression of it, anyway. “Rogers, just step through the damned door.”

He steps through the damned door.

Ms. Vendi lets the door close behind her, and gives Hill a look that says volumes in a language that Steve thinks might be Female. Then she stalks off. Steve watches her go until he realises that Natasha’s coming in the other direction, brow arched at him staring. He jerks his gaze away and meets Hill’s thoughtful gaze.

“A piece of advice, Rogers?”

“Ma’am?”

“If a woman holds the door open for you, let her.”

It goes against his upbringing. “But I’m being courteous!”

“By overriding her?” Hill gives him a skeptical look. “Well then, think of it as the modern way of showing courtesy a woman – by respecting her choices.”

* * *

Even after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Natasha keeps trying to hook Steve up.

He looks up his neighbour the erstwhile nurse – just her file. Agent Orange, a.k.a. Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Peggy’s grandniece.

“Seriously?” Sam says over pancakes and Steve’s shoulder. “And that’s not awkward _at all_?”

Steve remembers meeting Sharon on the stairs the first weekend he moved in. The way her eyes widened as she recognised him. He’d braced himself for a gushing introduction, but she’d been...friendly. Like he was ordinary – just Steve, a guy who’d moved in during the week. Nothing too forward, nothing pushy, just a woman meeting a neighbour for the first time.

There was something to be said about being ‘just Steve’.

* * *

 

The scrape of the window wakes him, a stealthy sound four floors up, bringing with it the winter’s cold.

Steve rolls and snatches up his shield all in one move. He dives over the coffee table, shedding the blanket with a kick, and somersaulting with his shield to wedge the attacker up against the wall, so their hands are trapped against their waist and his free hand is at her throat.

“Most people use the door,” he tells Natasha as he steps back.

“I didn’t figure you’d be on the couch,” she says, sliding the window down. “Isn’t it a bit soft?”

“Where’ve you been?”

She slides her knapsack off onto the dining room table. “Around and about. Hunting H.Y.D.R.A. Working up a few aliases. Things. And I heard you actually got Thanksgiving dinner.”

He directs her to the fridge where the containers of food are stacked, row upon row. Enough food to have fed his mom, Bucky’s family, and the neighbours, back in the day – not that Steve ate all that much back then – and this is just the leftovers.

“Maria has an exaggerated idea of how much three people eat.”

Or, perhaps, a good idea of what was expected for such a holiday. Sam seemed delighted by the food, which had been delivered by a courier that morning. Steve had fingered the note that came with it - Maria's handwriting, _Friends are the family we choose for ourselves._

“Or, she had pretty a good idea that you’d have company,” Natasha says, pulling out a tub of potato salad while Steve leans against the bench. “What’s her name?”

“Ness. She’s Sam’s cousin.”

“Didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with her family?”

“No.”

 _It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy,_ had been Ness’ exact words – a reference that Steve now understood - _I got the fuck out for a reason_.

Natasha chews a chunk of potato, her gaze on the shadowy corridor before her mouth curves as she looks at Steve. “So you didn’t—?”

“No.” When she doesn’t say anything, he adds, “She’s a soldier – a vet just back from a tour.”

“I don’t see how that makes a difference.” She crunches down on a fragment of bacon bit. “You should—”

“Natasha.” Steve isn’t going to do this again. She was interested in a general kind of way, but while Steve found her interesting, his attention wasn’t held, and Thanksgiving was not the time to be hooking up with Sam’s cousin. Besides, his existence is focused on finding Bucky right now – an anchor to his past, just as Sam is anchoring him in the present. “Did you find anything?”

“More ghosts, mostly. But also some leads.” Her smile is sly, “I’ll tell you if you agree to ask—”

“No.”

“Everyone should have someone.”

Steve briefly wonders who Natasha’s ‘someone’ is. “

* * *

The truckstop diner was a hole. And an excellent place to meet up before they went scouting around the abandoned factory Maria had intel on.

“Don’t look now, but the waitress is checking you out.”

Steve grins into his coffee cup. He doesn’t need to look, because he saw the woman looking before – and it wasn’t him that the waitress was watching. “No, I think she’s checking _you_ out.”

* * *

Steve hears the missile moments before the dawn sky lights with sudden explosive fire, and the chopper that was incoming moments earlier is incoming no more.

“Damn, Nat,” Sam says over the comms, a small dark speck swooping through the rose-coloured sky. “Where’d you hide the RPG?”

“I didn’t.”

“So who’s the cavalry?”

“The Cavalry is presently down in South America,” says a new voice, cool and strong over their co-opted comms. “However, you do have support.”

Steve finds a smile growing on his lips as he hurls his shield through the weak point of a wire fence, snapping both the fence and the electric relay on it before catching it on the rebound. "Good to know."

There’s a brief buzz over the comms as someone switches to a private channel. At first, Steve thinks it’s Maria, about to give him further intel on the abandoned factory and the H.Y.D.R.A lab that’s beneath it.

“You oughta ask her around to breakfast sometime,” Sam says, even as smaller flashes of light indicate that he’s taking his own measures against more incoming enemy. “Like, the night before.”

He’d thought he’d been a little more subtle. Clearly not. Steve doesn’t answer as he plunges through the break in the fence, his body tensing as the remnant buzz of power crackles over the suit they acquired to insulate him from the residual electricity of the fence.

Then he’s through and somersaulting to his feet, up in time to deflect the bullets from the automatic gun emplacements that have just started to track his path across the yard. The thrown shield takes care of two of those, and the third stutters for a moment, then explodes. As do all the gun emplacements.

“Got those that were moving,” Maria says, “But keep an eye out. Romanoff, my board says you’re clear.”

“On the way in,” Natasha says, and there’s a slight hitch in her voice that suggests she’s already climbing.

Steve briefly wonders how it is that Maria has eyes-on for Natasha's position, the gun emplacements targeting him, _and_ a sighting on the helicopter. A moment later he remembers who Maria's working for these days.

“Glad you’re here,” Steve tells Maria as he sprints for the door, ignoring Sam’s lilting _Breakfast!_ in his ear.

* * *

The Iron Man suit disassembles into a suitcase. Dark grey, like the suit she’s wearing underneath it. An elastic from an unseen pocket sweeps her hair up, and suddenly she’s a businesswoman on her way home.

Steve watches the transformation with some bemusement and no small amount of admiration. “So, what are you doing now?”

“I’ll take the intel and see what my connections can do with it,” she says. “Where will you and Wilson be headed next?”

“I wouldn’t say no to Bimini!” Sam calls down the corridor.

“Probably out to Europe,” Steve says. “Barton has eyes on several organisations he thinks are sheltering H.Y.D.R.A elements.”

“Will Romanoff be going with?”

“You'll have to ask her. Probably.” Steve hesitates, suddenly feeling awkward and uncertain. It's one thing to talk about supplies, support, and plans, quite another to talk about things that don't relate to the mission. And he's never been good at this. Then again, from the gossip he gleaned about the place, neither was Maria. “Actually, when I asked what you were doing now, I kind of meant dinner.”

That takes her by surprise if her stare is any sign. Under that stare, his cheeks grow warm - then flame to bright embarrassment as Sam hollers down the hall. “You're welcome to stay for breakfast, too!”

Steve winces. But he doesn't apologise - either for Sam or for himself. “Ignore Sam. You don’t have to—It’s just dinner.”

Maria starts to answer. Pauses. Closes her mouth. She looks away, and it takes Steve a moment to realise her cheeks are slightly pink, too. Her gaze rises, meets his briefly, then drops back down again.

“I can do dinner,” she says after clearing her throat a little.

Steve isn't sure what makes him ask, "And breakfast?"

The look she gives him says he's pushing it - but she doesn't seem to mind. “We’ll call breakfast negotiable," she says.


End file.
